The present invention relates to printing at or near the edges or ends of print media by hardcopy devices. In particular it relates to so-called bleed printing or zero margin printing in which printheads of a hardcopy device apply ink to a print media right up to, and in some cases beyond, its edges.
When printing a sheet of print media in a hardcopy device, it is fed on to a platen in the print zone in a controlled manner by passing it between a feed roller and a pinch wheel. When the page or sheet has an unprinted bottom margin of conventional size, good print quality can be maintained throughout the sheet, since the trailing edge of the sheet remains held between the feed roller and the pinch wheel until printing of the sheet has finished. When, however, the sheet is to be printed with a relatively small bottom margin, or no margin at all, the sheet is released from the pinch between the feed roller and the pinch wheel before printing is finished and this causes a discontinuity in the printing due to the associated jump in the spacing between the printhead and the print media passing beneath it.
When undertaking full bleed printing, it is known to fire ink out of the printhead nozzles even slightly beyond the end of the page. This ensures that, even in the event of positioning errors, there are no blank areas without ink at the edge of the sheet of print media. This printing out of the page requires an ink collection arrangement in the platen to absorb the ink so that it does not mark subsequent sheets of print media. The provision of such an ink collection arrangement takes up a considerable amount of space. In addition, its size requires that the printhead and its associated print zone are at a considerable spacing from the traction system, viz. the feeder roller and the pinch wheel.